At church this morning, our minister, Cynthia, led a Buddhist-inspired meditation on the end of life. Rather than imagine our own death in stark detail—as Buddhists are apparently supposed to do—we were asked to simply imagine ourselves at the end of our lives. Where were we? What did it look like? How did we feel? Were we at peace?

I was a little surprised to learn that my old, dying self was pretty chill. I liked Death’s Door Knickers. Ass planted in an Adirondack chair, she drank sweet tea and watched the butterflies in the garden. Everything was overgrown, of course, since old me still can’t garden, but she’d learned a while back how to plant things that could grow without her interference.

The house behind her was small and brown, like it had grown right up out of the earth with the black-eyed susans and honeysuckle, and beneath her…